Epilepsy, a neurological disorder characterized by the occurrence of seizures (specifically episodic impairment or loss of consciousness, abnormal motor phenomena, psychic or sensory disturbances, or the perturbation of the autonomic nervous system), is debilitating to a great number of people. It is believed that as many as two to four million Americans may suffer from various forms of epilepsy. Research has found that its prevalence may be even greater worldwide, particularly in less economically developed nations, suggesting that the worldwide figure for epilepsy sufferers may be in excess of one hundred million.
Because epilepsy is characterized by seizures, its sufferers are frequently limited in the kinds of activities they may participate in. Epilepsy can prevent people from driving, working, or otherwise participating in much of what society has to offer. Some epilepsy sufferers have serious seizures so frequently that they are effectively incapacitated.
Furthermore, epilepsy is often progressive and can be associated with degenerative disorders and conditions. Over time, epileptic seizures often become more frequent and more serious, and in particularly severe cases, are likely to lead to deterioration of other brain functions (including cognitive function) as well as physical impairments.
The current state of the art in treating neurological disorders, particularly epilepsy, typically involves drug therapy and surgery. The first approach is usually drug therapy.
A number of drugs are approved and available for treating epilepsy, such as sodium valproate, phenobarbital/primidone, ethosuximide, gabapentin, phenyloin, and carbamazepine, as well as a number of others. Unfortunately, those drugs typically have serious side effects, especially toxicity, and it is extremely important in most cases to maintain a precise therapeutic serum level to avoid breakthrough seizures (if the dosage is too low) or toxic effects (if the dosage is too high). The need for patient discipline is high, especially when a patient's drug regimen causes unpleasant side effects the patient may wish to avoid.
Moreover, while many patients respond well to drug therapy alone, a significant number (at least 20–30%) do not. For those patients, surgery is presently the best-established and most viable alternative course of treatment.
Currently practiced surgical approaches include radical surgical resection such as hemispherectomy, corticectomy, lobectomy and partial lobectomy, and less-radical lesionectomy, transection, and stereotactic ablation. Besides being less than fully successful, these surgical approaches generally have a high risk of complications, and can often result in damage to eloquent (i.e., functionally important) brain regions and the consequent long-term impairment of various cognitive and other neurological functions. Furthermore, for a variety of reasons, such surgical treatments are contraindicated in a substantial number of patients. And unfortunately, even after radical brain surgery, many epilepsy patients are still not seizure-free.
Electrical stimulation is an emerging therapy for treating epilepsy. However, currently approved and available electrical stimulation devices apply continuous electrical stimulation to neural tissue surrounding or near implanted electrodes, and do not perform any detection—they are not responsive to relevant neurological conditions.
The NeuroCybernetic Prosthesis (NCP) from Cyberonics, for example, applies continuous electrical stimulation to the patient's vagus nerve. This approach has been found to reduce seizures by about 50% in about 50% of patients. Unfortunately, a much greater reduction in the incidence of seizures is needed to provide clinical benefit. The Activa device from Medtronic is a pectorally implanted continuous deep brain stimulator intended primarily to treat Parkinson's disease. In operation, it supplies a continuous electrical pulse stream to a selected deep brain structure where an electrode has been implanted.
Continuous stimulation of deep brain structures for the treatment of epilepsy has not met with consistent success. To be effective in terminating seizures, it is believed that one effective site where stimulation should be performed is near the focus of the epileptogenic region. The focus is often in the neocortex, where continuous stimulation may cause significant neurological deficit with clinical symptoms including loss of speech, sensory disorders, or involuntary motion. Accordingly, research has been directed toward automatic responsive epilepsy treatment based on a detection of imminent seizure.
A typical epilepsy patient experiences episodic attacks or seizures, which are generally defined as periods of abnormal neurological activity. As is traditional in the art, such periods shall be referred to herein as “ictal” (though it should be noted that “ictal” can refer to neurological phenomena other than epileptic seizures).
Most prior work on the detection and responsive treatment of seizures via electrical stimulation has focused on analysis of electroencephalogram (EEG) and electrocorticogram (ECoG) waveforms. In general, EEG signals represent aggregate neuronal activity potentials detectable via electrodes applied to a patient's scalp, and ECoGs use internal electrodes on or near the brain. ECoG signals, deep-brain counterparts to EEG signals, are detectable via electrodes implanted under the dura mater, and sometimes within the patient's brain. Unless the context clearly and expressly indicates otherwise, the term “EEG” shall be used generically herein to refer to both EEG and ECoG signals.
Much of the work on detection has focused on the use of time-domain analysis of EEG signals. See, e.g., J. Gotman, Automatic seizure detection: improvements and evaluation, Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol. 1990; 76(4): 317–24. In a typical time-domain detection system, EEG signals are received by one or more implanted electrodes and then processed by a control module, which then is capable of performing an action (intervention, warning, recording, etc.) when an abnormal event is detected.
In the Gotman system, EEG waveforms are filtered and decomposed into “features” representing characteristics of interest in the waveforms. One such feature is characterized by the regular occurrence (i.e., density) of half-waves exceeding a threshold amplitude occurring in a specified frequency band between approximately 3 Hz and 20 Hz, especially in comparison to background (non-ictal) activity. When such half-waves are detected, the onset of a seizure is identified.
A more computationally demanding approach is to transform EEG signals into the frequency domain for rigorous spectrum analysis. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,995,868 to Dorfineister et al., which analyzes the power spectral density of EEG signals in comparison to background characteristics. Although this approach is generally believed to achieve good results, for the most part, its computational expense renders it less than optimal for use in long-term implanted epilepsy monitor and treatment devices. With current technology, the battery life in an implantable device computationally capable of performing the Dorfineister method would be too short for it to be feasible.
Also representing an alternative and more complex approach is U.S. Pat. No. 5,857,978 to Hively et al., in which various non-linear and statistical characteristics of EEG signals are analyzed to identify the onset of ictal activity. Once more, the calculation of statistically relevant characteristics is not believed to be feasible in an implantable device.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,016,449 to Fischell, et al. (which is hereby incorporated by reference as though set forth in full herein), describes an implantable seizure detection and treatment system. In the Fischell system, various detection methods are possible, all of which essentially rely upon the analysis (either in the time domain or the frequency domain) of processed EEG signals. Fischell's controller is preferably implanted intracranially, but other approaches are also possible, including the use of an external controller. When a seizure is detected, the Fischell system applies responsive electrical stimulation to terminate the seizure, a capability that will be discussed in further detail below.
All of these approaches provide useful information, and in some cases may provide sufficient information for accurate detection and prediction of most imminent epileptic seizures.
However, none of the various implementations of the known approaches provide 100% seizure detection accuracy in a clinical environment.
Two types of detection errors are generally possible. A “false positive,” as the term is used herein, refers to a detection of a seizure or ictal activity when no seizure or other abnormal event is actually occurring. Similarly, a “false negative” herein refers to the failure to detect a seizure or ictal activity that actually is occurring or shortly will occur.
In most cases, with all known implementations of the known approaches to detecting abnormal seizure activity solely by monitoring and analyzing EEG activity, when a seizure detection algorithm is tuned to catch all seizures, there will be a significant number of false positives. While it is currently believed that there are minimal or no side effects to over-stimulation (e.g., providing stimulation sufficient to terminate a seizure in response to a false positive), the possibility of accidentally initiating a seizure must be considered.
Known systems for detecting epileptic seizures are essentially passive in nature (i.e., they receive and process existing signals), and valuable information about the physiological state of the brain is typically not available. Although most or nearly all seizures may be detected by a well-tuned system passive system according to the art, there may be a significant number of false-positive detections, and some seizures may not be detected early enough to facilitate successful treatment.
As is well known, it has been suggested that it is possible to treat and terminate seizures by applying electrical stimulation to the brain. See, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 6,016,449 to Fischell et al., and H. R. Wagner, et al., Suppression of cortical epileptiform activity by generalized and localized ECoG desynchronization, Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol. 1975; 39(5): 499–506. And as stated above, it is believed to be beneficial to perform this stimulation only when a seizure (or other undesired neurological event) is occurring or about to occur, as inappropriate stimulation may result in the initiation of seizures.
Furthermore, it should be noted that a false negative (that is, a seizure that occurs without any warning or treatment from the device) will often cause the patient significant discomfort and detriment. Clearly, false negatives are to be avoided.
To generalize, it is presently believed there may not be sufficient information in EEG waveforms to permit accurate detection and prediction of seizures in all cases. And if the information is present, it may be manifested in a way that makes it computationally difficult, if not impossible, to extract it from other EEG contents, such as normal brain activity and noise.